Apple Inc. is a liberal [1] corporation based out of Cupertino, California, that deals primarily in computer hardware, software, "smart phones", and their line of MP3 players, iPods. Founded on April 1st, 1976, by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, its first product was the Apple I. The two Steves founded the company in their garage, which has since became one of the biggest tech companies in America. On January 9th, 2007, Apple Computer Inc. officially changed its name to Apple Inc. to include their other non computer products. That same day, they announced the revolutionary iPhone, which according to Apple, combines "a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching."[2]

Politics

Original computers

The Apple I

The Apple I was the first apple computer. The Apple I started out with just being a circuit sold to computer hobbyists. Later Apple realized that they could make more money by selling the Apple I all developed and put together instead of having the consumer build it themselves.

In 1977, however, Apple released the Apple II, which was one of the first computers that came completely contained within a plastic case, motioning towards user-friendliness. The main difference, however, was the screen display. Instead of just being able to display text, it would display graphics, charts, and eventually, color. Many small companies were buying these for use in their offices, but Steve Jobs had ambitions to expand.

The Apple III

The Apple III was created in response to Steve Jobs' wanting to move ahead with new innovations. He wanted to innovate, and as such, provided some questionable designs to the employees, such as it being shipped without a cooling fan, because Steve Jobs felt that having a loud obnoxious fan would interfere with his meditation. This particular defect caused the computer to break down, usually before it had reached its destination. Thousands were recalled.

The Lisa

The Lisa was named after Steve Jobs' daughter Lisa. The company had contests to come up for a computer acronym using the letters LISA. The Lisa was a failure because it was more expensive and not as powerful as the Macintosh.

The Macintosh

In 1984, the next Apple computer was released. Apple paired with Adobe to create Adobe PageMaker. The Macintosh was famous for its "1984" Super Bowl advertisement. The name of the device was taken from Steve Job's favorite type of apples the McIntosh apples. Despite the difference in spelling the name was also used by McIntosh Labs who brought certain legal problems into play. [6] The Macintosh had three major flaws. First, it only had six applications[Citation Needed], and the Macintosh did not have an internal hard drive to save to, so users constantly had to do the "Floppy disk Olympics."

The Apple IIgs

The Apple IIgs was a mix between the two, but its main feature was that it was mouse driven.

John Scully

John Scully, who had spent his career at PepsiCo, was appointed CEO of Apple by Apple's Board because Apple's Board would not let Jobs run the company. He was selected based on his marketing and management expertise. Jobs supported Scully's selection because he knew nothing about computers and would need to depend on Jobs for all decisions. This backfired on Jobs when he was forced to leave the company leaving control into the hand of a man who knew nothing about computers. Sales at Apple increased from $800 million to $8 billion under Scully's management.[7] Under Scully, Apple introduced the Newton, a personal digital assistant. Although the Newton was not a market success it inspired other similar products such as the Palm Pilot.

Jobs Returns

In 1997, Jobs organized a boardroom coup against then-CEO Gil Amelio to take control of the company after 3 years of declining stock values. He then restructured the company's product line, and eventually introduced an all-in-one computer named iMac.

Tim Cook was acting CEO when Jobs was having health issues. On October 5, 2011, Jobs died and Cook became the actual CEO.

Stock

Apple became a publicly traded company December 12, 1980. Apple issued its first corporate stock dividend on May 11, 1987. A month later on June 16, Apple stock split for the first time in a 2:1 split. Apple continued to pay a quarterly dividend with about 0.3% yield until November 21, 1995. On January 25, 2012, Apple became the company with the largest market capitalization.[8] On August 27, 2012, its market capitalization reached $637 billion.[9]